Processes and devices are already known to separate non-ferrous materials in accordance with their individual material components in order reintroduce them into a production line. Processes and devices so far known include a rotating drum, which is equipped with permanent-magnets on its surface. The individual permanent-magnets are arranged on the surface in such a way that on a south pole a north pole follows. These drums rotate at high speed in order to make the separation most efficient. In most cases the conglomerate of different non-ferrous materials is fed to the rotating drums by a conveyor belt. A feeding device transports the conglomerate of non-ferrous materials to the conveyor belt. The rotating magnetic field creates together with the non-ferrous materials an eddy current field, which acts on non-ferrous materials and dependent from the sort of material they slip it away in varying distances. Guiding elements at the exit guide separated material to different containers, each related to a particular metal.
This kind of separation for different non-ferrous materials has the disadvantage that all materials have to pass the same magnetic drum, which rotates at a constant revolution. This leads to an almost constant eddy current field and the slip distance is only dependent from weight and size of the metal piece. For this type of processing random factors play an important role and a clear separation in accordance with the sort of the metals does not exist. Hence, it is necessary to have the material to be separated run several times over the separation device for achieving a sufficient clearness of different non-ferrous materials. Such a procedure is cost intensive, needs time and therefore is inefficient.